How to enable full multimedia capabilities on Suse 10.3 using the xine engine

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How to enable full multimedia capabilities on Suse 10.3 using the xine engine

This articles is mainly meant for Linux or SUSE newbies, but hopefully others will find it useful.

Enabling Full Multimedia Capabilities on openSUSE 10.3 using the Xine engine
The process of setting up full multimedia capabilities in openSUSE 10.3 is quite similar to previous SUSE/openSUSE releases. Its a little bit simpler in openSUSE 10.3 due to a new feature that was added to the YAST software module i.e. the ability to add community repos from YAST with just a few clicks.

Setting Up The Repositories
The YAST repositories that need to be enabled are Packman and VideoLan. To enable the repositories

Run YAST (from Kmenu -> Computer -> Administrator Settings)

Go to Software -> Community Repositories

Select Packman and VideoLan by placing a tick in the check box beside their names and click finish

YAST will then automatically setup the repositories for you. During the setup process, you will be asked if you want YAST to import the gpg keys for the repositories you chose and you need to select “yes”.

Which Libraries do you need?

The basic libraries you need to install are libxine1, w32codec-all and for playing encrypted dvd discs, you need libdvdcss. There are obviously optional packages available, but this is for an individual to choose whether they need them or not. If you use totem and want it to use the xine engine, you will also need to select libxine1-gnome-vfs. If you want Mozilla based browsers to use your Xine based player, also select xine-browser-plugin.

Installing the Packages

To install the packages

YAST -> Software -> Software Management -> Search

Look for the packages you need and select them for installation. The installation of libxine1 should automatically result in xine-lib (SUSEs crippled Xine library) being automatically uninstalled.

Also select the Xine based apps you want to run such as kaffeine, amarok-xine, totem, codeine, gxine, kmplayer and xine itself. There is obviously no need to do this if they were already installed and they should be able to play wmv, avi etc once libxine and w32codec-all are installed.

Other applications to look at are MPlayer and VLC. You may also need to install LAME if you want to rip your discs to mp3 files.

Hope this helps those who have been requesting and article for openSUSE 10.3. Any comments, correction and other input is welcome.

Previously in the version 10.2 and 10.3 I installed the gstreamer package and did not have problems to see multimedia. I have reinstalled the version 10.3 and now I can't open the multimedia files.

I want to understand more than happen, I never did to install the w32codec-all package, as far as I know.

Win32 codecs are used by the likes of Xine, Mplayer and VLC. I don't think I can be of much help with the gstreamer stuff since I am not particularly a fan of it and hardly use it. As far as I know, if you have the right plugins, then you should be able to play most multimedia types. Make sure you have gstreamer-plugins-bad and gstreamer-plugins-ugly installed.

I use Totem. Libxine1 package, w32, gstreamer.ugly and bad them not resolved the problem.

I do not want to reinstall the system. The unique thing that I did was not to mark the check to add the additional repositories before the installation. It seem strange that in the first installation of the 10.3 I did not have problems of this type.

In another case, that alternatives exist to gstreamer for Totem?, without focusing us only in this.

Installing libxine and win32 codecs won't make totem use the Xine backend. If you want totem to use the Xine backend, you also have to install libxine1-gnome-vfs. If you have the right libraries and plugins installed, then I don't know why totem will not work for you. Maybe you need to enable the Packman repository and install multimedia packages from there. Their packages replace the crippled ones in openSUSE.

As far as I know if you have w32codecs-all, mplayer, the gstreamer010 plugins from Packman, particularly bad, ffmpeg, and ugly, lame, mad, libffmpeg0, you should have been alright. Get all of them from Packman, even if you have to click the Version tab in YaST and choose the specific version manually because it is older, as would be the case if you've upgraded Gnome to GNOME:/STABLE Build Service builds.

Perhaps the gstreamer version of Totem is more crippled than I had thought, but I have seen users report all being well as long as they had installed the Packman versions of the plugins.

If you like you can install Packman's version of totem and totem-plugin, which will bring in the xine version of Totem and would also have brought in libxine1 as a dependency, and will automatically uninstall xine-lib, the default xine plugin in OpenSUSE that excludes playback of proprietary codecs.

I don't know why so many now recommend the installation of the libdvdcss from the vlc player's repo. That is the version that needs a libxine1 enabled player for encrypted dvd's. The libdvdcss2, from the libdvdcss repo of the vlc ftp site will enable decryption on any dvd capable player, gstreamer or xine based. I still have that saved, but it is downloadable from the site, you make it executable and right-click Install With Yast, logout and in and you've got dvd. Some players may still need libdvdnav4 and libdvdplay but most get along fine with only libdvdread3 that gets installed as a dependency with the players.

If you did the single cd install you may not have java-sun5-jre, java-sun5-plugin, flash, and realplayer installed but if you switch the Search box to Patterns and select the non-oss multimedia pattern that would take care of that. A further fix for some Java problems is to then upgrade java-sun5-plugin to java-sun6-plugin. That will uninstall java-sun5-plugin and you should then put a check in java-sun6-jre and trash java-sun5-jre before proceeding. Then YaST will complain but tell it it's okay to ignore the non-oss multimedia dependency this time. It will actually remove that check but leave the programs installed.

If you want the Acrobat Reader, you might as well download the newer version from adobe.com. Just make the rpm executable and right click Install With YaST.

It a choice if you want mplayerplug-in, totem-plugin from Packman, or that xine browser plugin mentioned in the sticky. Just don't install more than one of those!

If files aren't opening in RealPlayer you need to rename or delete the interfering codec from /usr/lib/browser-plugins. Totem's Real plugin is named libtotemcomplex something and there are two of those. Mplayer's have real in the name. Ones an .so and ones an .so.xpt. Get rid of those and delete the /home/yourname/.mozilla/firefox/somethingplugins.reg. Run RealPlayer and open the wizard again in the help menu to get its plugin restored properly. Open Firefox and it'll re-register its plugins.

Theoretically just using the one-click Gnome codec installer from the Restricted Formats page of opensuse-community.org should have taken care of at least some of this. The Advanced checkmark in that would have given you the choice of installing some of what I've mentioned automatically. But if you've already started manually installing some of this stuff you may as well try to add the few missing pieces yourself.

See if you've got the stuff I mentioned. If you do, and still can't play your files then something must be broken. You should have no multimedia problems with all that.

I sure hope enough folks get used to this sort of thing. I've typed similar out on enough posts to make my fingers tired!

I just don't feel the guides this time go far enough. And I didn't even talk about the KDE stuff like Amarok (switch it to xine in its settings) and Kaffeine (get 'em from Packman, the rest of the libxine1 plugins, and the needed k3b-codecs Packman plugin!

I see no progress. It remains on 0% and throws message connection timed out.

What is the possible reason? I am getting ping reply from download.opensuse.org
I also tried to connect using IP address of download.opensuse.org Same error..
Any other source? Packman also giving me same error how ever I can connect to internet with no problem. I am writing this message from OpenSuSe 10.3 browser only. I am accesing from home using my GPRS connection. No proxies nothing else. All ports are opened. What could be reason behind this ?

The problem is probably the word repodata. That's something used by the package manager, not a directory a user should type in. If the url is not typed in correctly, by either exclusion, inclusion of incorrect stuff or misspelling or wrong case, then YaST won't be able to add it or use it.

This would also resolve the case of ridiculously dated (i.e. SUSE 9.1 -- what the?) stickies that are in the forum, and in general the instructions will be an awful lot easier and generally more recommended.